SECTION CCXLV.. Influence of a Community of Women and Polygamy.

INFLUENCE OF A COMMUNITY OF WOMEN AND POLYGAMY.

Most barbarous nations live very unchaste;[245-1] so that, as Tacitus observes, the ancient Germans were a brilliant exception to the rule.[245-2] Vices of unchastity always limit the otherwise natural increase of population. Premature enjoyment exhausts the sources of fruitfulness in the case of many.[245-3] The life of the child conceived in sin is generally little valued by its parents. Hence the numerous instances of exposure and infanticide.[245-4] We have already seen how closely, psychologically speaking, a community of goods is allied to a community of women. (§ 85.) And, indeed, in the lower stages of civilization, we find as close an approximation to the latter as to the former; and it is difficult to believe that, among men living in a state of nudity, the marriage of one man to one woman could properly exist.[245-5] But it is as little possible to reconcile a community of women with density of population as great national wealth with a community of goods. Any one acquainted with the condition and capacities of new born children knows that the weak little flame easily goes out when not nursed by family care.[245-6]

Polygamy also is a hinderance to the increase of population. Abstract physiology must, indeed, admit that a man may, even without any danger to his health, generate more children than a woman can bear.[245-7] But, in reality, the simultaneous enjoyment of several women leads to excess and early exhaustion;[245-8] and if one of them is married after the other, the older who might still bear children for a long time are neglected by the man.[245-9] Monogamy is, doubtless, the Creator's law, since only in monogamous countries can we expect to find the intimate union of family life, the beauties of social intercourse and free citizenship.[245-10] "God made them male and female."[245-11] And yet in all countries with which we are statistically acquainted, there is a somewhat larger number of boys than of girls born;[245-12] but this excess is removed by the time that puberty sets in, by reason of the greater mortality of boys. Only extraordinary conditions which thin the ranks of males, such as war and emigration, leave a preponderance of the number of women.[245-13] Hence, among barbarous nations, who live in everlasting strife (§§ 67, 70), polygamy is very generally established. Men are seldom deterred therefrom by a solicitude concerning what they shall eat, since the women are treated as slaves, and rather support the men than are supported by them.[245-14] But in the civilized countries of the east, the polygamy of the great may actually lead to the compulsory singleness of many of the lower classes, as a species of compensation.[245-15] The monstrous institution of eunuchism, which has existed time out of mind in the east, is a consequence of this condition of things as well as of the natural jealousy of the harem.[245-16]

Similar customs are found among the nomads. The Bedouins dissolve their marriages so easily that a man forty-five years old had 50 wives; family secrets are a thing unknown there. (Burckhardt, Notes on the Bedouins, 64; Travels app. II, 448; Ritter, Erdkunde, XII, 205, 211, 983.) On the Libyans, see Herodot., IV, 168, 172, 186, 180: on the Massagetes, Herodot., I, 216; on the Taprobanes, Diod., II, 58; on the Troglodytes, Pomp, Mella., I, 8, Agatharch, 30. Community of women among the ancient Britons, Caesar, B. G. V, 14 seq.; also among the naked, tatooed Caledonians, Dio Cass., LXXVI, 12; probably also among the cannibal Irish. Strabo, IV, 201. Great laxity of the marriage tie in Moelmud's laws of Wales, (Palgrave, Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth, I, 458 ff.) in which country a species of tenure in common of land and servants was customary. (Wachsmuth, Europ. Sittengesch. II, 225.) In Russia, in very ancient times, only the Polanes had real marriages. (Nestor v. Schlözer, I, 125 seq.) Something very analogous even among the Spartans: same education for boys and girls, admittance for men to the female gymnasiums; marriage in the form of an abduction, and afterwards fornication. (Xenoph., De rep. Laced. I, 6: Plutarch, Lycurg. 15.) Adultery tolerated by law in countless cases. (Xenoph., II, 7 ff.; St. John, The Hellenes, I, 394.) History of the origin of the so-called Partheniæ; Strabo, VI, 279. (Supra, § 83.) The custom which prevails among so many barbarous nations to designate one's progeny by the name of the mother, Sanchoniathan traces to the licentiousness of women. (p. 16, Orell.) Traces of this also in Egypt: Schmidt, Papyrusurkunden, 321 ff. Avunculus means little grand-father. Many proofs which Peschel, Völkerkunde, 243 seq. explains otherwise, but which seem to me to point to an original community of wives.]